‘Fitted For But Not With’, is excellent treasury speak for risk management, which in turn is code for ‘do nothing cos she’ll be right, bet it won’t be needed‘.
In the end of the day, the ships will need it fitted.
Probably every appropriate ship in the fleet will need its compliment fitted at the same time.
So, where ever that ship happens to be, it will need to return to be fitted.
The very premise is absurd & a throwback to strategic environments past, but hey, it’s only a warship.
I doubt that every vessel would need to be fitted at the same time. How often has the RAN, or any navy for that matter, had every single warship ready and available for deployment?
I would expect that in major wartime conditions, the normal 'Rule of Threes' might get modified or suspended, with some of the more minor maintenance and training cycles either postponed or cancelled outright. However, there will still be times when warships are undergoing significant maintenance or repair periods and not available for deployment for weeks or possibly even months at a time. In such cases, it would be much better to have a modular system which could be removed from the docked vessel and available to be used aboard another vessel.
Wouldn’t it make sense to spend the relative peanuts and fit all ships with effective CIWS and then have spares to swap out for maintenance. We’re spending billions of dollars on more deployed VLS tubes but we are not effectively protecting the ships that carry them. After all, we fight with what we have.
Here is the rub with the above post. What (at this point in time) is an effective CIWS? Is it SeaPhalanx, Phalanx, RAM, SeaRAM, or something else entirely?
Given a choice, I would rather have a Phalanx fitted prior to deploying to a possible combat zone than not, unless something else more effective was available. However the Phalanx and SeaPhalanx systems have kind of had their day in terms of effectiveness vs. aerial threats. Remember that their effective range is less than 2km, which means that there would only be ~1.3 sec of firing possible against potential inbound supersonic AShM like the П-270 Москит /P-270 Moskit/SS-N-22 Sunburn.
This then leads into the question of whether or not the RAN should start bringing some other type of CIWS into service, or alternately if more sensor systems as well as VLS and missiles are needed, to detect and attempt to intercept such threats before they get into an inner defensive layer?
I raise the question not so much because I want an answer, but to raise the point that there are tradeoffs. Spending coin, albeit probably not all that much since I think Mk 15 Phalanx systems current cost something like USD$15 mil. on a system that potentially will not contribute to the overall defences of a vessel, does not make sense. It might be a better/wiser decision to instead increase the number of active decoys like Nulka fitted to RAN vessels. Or have the RAN add another missile type into the inventory, and begin integrating a missile-based CIWS and/or VSHORAD missile to the fleet.
breakingdefense.com